They said, “We have a problem and we need your help.”

“What’s the issue and what are the requirements?” I asked.

The reply was, “We don’t know. We just need to know all the options.”

This is a challenging way to solve a problem. When you don’t know what’s needed or what’s desired, it’s hard to clarify viable paths.

Through some investigation, I learned that the “problem” was actually a potential problem. What the group needed was a contingency plan in case a few circumstances changed.

The learning here is that there’s a big difference between “we have a problem” and “we might have a problem if ... ”

And if we’re not careful, we might waste a lot of energy solving problems that don’t exist.